Separate and Unequal: Residential Segregation and Estimated Cancer
Risks Associated with Ambient Air Toxics In California
This page finalized July 18, 2005.
Chairman’s Air Pollution Seminar Series
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Wednesday, July
20, 2005
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Confrence Room 620, Sixth Floor
1001 I Street, Sacramento
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Video Confrence with El Monte
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Separate
And Unequal: Residential Segregation and Estimated Cancer
Risks Associated with Ambient Air Toxics in California
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Rachel Morello-Frosch, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Assistant Professor
Department of Community Health, School of Medicine &
Center for Environmental Studies
Brown University
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Previous research has documented racial and income disparities in exposures to various
categories of air pollutants. Underlying this research is the belief that pollution may play an important, yet
poorly understood, role in the complex pattern of disparate health status among the poor and people of color in
the United States. However, few environmental justice studies have elucidated pathways that explain how social
context shapes demographic disparities in environmental hazard exposures. This study examines links between social
inequality-particularly residential segregation-- with estimated community ambient air toxics exposures and their
associated cancer risks.
For this study, we assessed whether racial and economic disparities in estimated cancer risk associated with air
toxics are mediated by levels of residential segregation in California. To analyze the relationship between pollution
and health risk burdens with race-based residential segregation, we obtained modeled ambient air toxics concentration
estimates from U.S. EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) and combined these data with cancer potency information.
We find that overall, estimated cancer risks associated with ambient air toxics are highest in counties that are
highly segregated. Moreover, disparities between racial/ethnic groups are also higher in more segregated counties.
Multivariate modeling suggests that race plays an explanatory role in cancer risk distributions even after controlling
for other economic and demographic factors, but that patterns of racial disparity are significantly mediated by
patterns of segregation. This suggests that spatial socioeconomic forces, such as segregation, play a key role
in shaping the environmental "riskscape" and ultimately contribute to persistent and complex patterns
of racial disparities in community susceptibility to pollution exposures. |
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Rachel Morello-Frosch is an assistant professor at the Department of Community Health, School of Medicine and
the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University. She completed her bachelor's degree in development economics,
a master of public health degree in epidemiology and biostatistics, and her Ph.D. in environmental health sciences
at the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches methods courses on environmental health, risk assessment,
and policy, epidemiology, and a seminar on the science and political economy of environmental health and justice.
Rachel's research examines race and class determinants of the distribution of health risks associated with air
pollution among diverse communities in the United States. Her current work focuses on: comparative risk assessment
and environmental justice, developing models for community-based environmental health research, science and environmental
health policy-making, children's environmental health, and the intersection between economic restructuring and
community environmental health.
Rachel is currently working on a research collaborative with academic colleagues in Southern California, and Communities
for a Better Environment on "Air Pollution, Toxics and Environmental Justice." She is also collaborating
with Silent Spring Institute in Massachusetts on a community-based household exposure study in Richmond, California
on endocrine-disrupting chemicals funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. |
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For more information on this
Seminar please contact Barbara Weller at (916) 324-4816 or send email to: blweller@arb.ca.gov.
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For a complete listing of
the ARB Chairman's Series and the related documentation for each one of the series please check this page.
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Note: for a print friendly
version of this page please click on the "Print Friendly" option at the very top of this page.
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Main Seminar Series Page
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Research
Activities
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